Inner City Farmer

I haven’t emptied my garbage can in three weeks. Yes, it’s nearly full. But it doesn’t stink—I have been dumping all organic matter into my new compost bin. So what is in there? Mostly packaging. According to a 2006 Environmental Protection Agency report, 28% of our municipal waste, by weight, is packaging and containers. How stupid is that? Such a high number speaks to our gullibility and lack of foresight as a species. Packaging is the place where major corporations make their greatest pitch. They stamp “New and Improved” on the box, and we fall for it every time.

Even the better companies pull this move. One of my favorite breakfast cereals is the cheesily named Optimum Zen made by Nature’s Path. The company’s slogan is “Nurturing People, Nature & Spirit,” and it goes out of its way on the packaging it uses to trumpet how great they are for being organic: “No synthetic pesticides, no synthetic herbicides, no preservatives and additives, no genetically engineered seeds or ingredients, no irradiation.” It also boasts that the cereal comes in something called an Envirobox, which as far as I can tell is just a smaller box: “Reducing our package size by 10% lessens our yearly impact upon the earth by saving over 1,300,000 gal. of water, 942,128 KWH of energy, and 144 tons of paperboard.” These are astonishing figures, but it saddens me to think that, knowing all this, this ultra environmentally friendly company only reduced its impact by 10%. To me, this comes off as a token gesture. Why not eliminate the packaging altogether?

The answer: because no one would buy its products. In the end this isn’t the fault of the companies as much as it is the consumers. We should know better. We should demand better. Stop bringing trash into your household. Find a canvas bag, and don’t let any businesses foist their plastic bags upon you. Start buying your dry goods in bulk. No, I can’t buy Optimum Zen that way, but I can get—cliché alert—good crunchy granola in bulk at my local food co-op, Wheatsville. I’ll admit to occasionally using new plastic bags to do this, but I’m trying I swear to only reusing old ones.

There’s an even better solution than that, which I learned while shopping at Wheatsville the other day and observing this beautiful sight: a woman filling containers she’d brought from home with flour, oats, and sugar. It was a jarring sight at first because you never see such forethought practiced in stores. People tend to just let the stores dictate their actions, but we need to realize that in our culture our power as shoppers is just about the only true power we have.

For those looking to explore this issue a little deeper I recommend checking out what CarrotMob is up to. One Saturday not too long ago this radical nonprofit organization in San Francisco held an event where everyone in the neighborhood agreed to shop at the same liquor store, which they picked by asking all the liquor stores what percentage of the proceeds from sales would they put towards increasing the store’s energy efficiency. The store that bid the highest won as did the environment. Now if only those people had refused to buy anything that came in plastic bags stuffed inside paper boxes and plastic containers. Perhaps someday soon.